


savour the moment

by forestpenguin



Series: the moment flowers bloom [3]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M, Firsts, Fluff, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Rain, groat cheese is an actual thing, i guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-05-16 16:48:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14815137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forestpenguin/pseuds/forestpenguin
Summary: the rain marks paths that long to be traced...(a fixit classic - there is a mission, there is an escape, there is downtime, and there is awkward mutual pining)





	savour the moment

**Author's Note:**

> @dasakuryo requested  
> Basorexia – An overwhelming desire to kiss.  
> Strikhedonia - The pleasure of being able to say “to hell with it”.
> 
> this was 1k too long to include in _star crossed lovers_ with all my other askbox fills.

Jyn rolls her shoulders in attempt to alleviate the soreness wrought by the day’s events. The motion elicits a series of soft clicks from her weary bones. 

Finding that scant relief unsatisfactory, she reaches up with both hands and stretches lazily, her fingertips grazing the roof of the cave. Once her hands fall back into her lap she notices they’re slightly damp, bits of green moss and soil clinging to her skin.

Wiping her palms on her pants, she leans over to inspect Cassian’s handiwork.

“Is it working?”

His response is a distracted hum. 

Jyn’s eyes flicker over the lighter set atop his neatly folded raincoat, the small canister drained of fuel from their attack on an Imperial storage facility, and return to watch Cassian strike the edge of his vibroblade against the third rock he’s tried tonight.

Her focus lingers on the rock and its rough, glassy texture. The neutral colour nags at her - there’s a part of her, her mother’s blood, that knows its name. Her memory fails her.

To distract herself from the upset starting to blossom in her heart she begins rummaging in her backpack, hoping to put together a decent meal.

Her mind quiets to the sounds of metal striking rock and rain splashing faintly against the roof of the cave. When she unearths the rations at the bottom of her bag an idea begins to form in her mind, coaxing out a smile.

A sudden crack disrupts the established rhythm and Jyn glances up in time to see the sparks bursting from the rock face to set the small pile of dry twigs she’d collected aflame. 

“There,” Cassian remarks, gently arranging stones around the fire to keep it contained. “Now we won’t freeze.” 

“How long d’you think we’ll be stuck here?”

Cassian remains hunched over, intent on feeding the infant flames, but gazes up at her. It’s an ordinary, amicable, glance over the fire; yet the intimacy of it catches Jyn off guard. He’s looking thoughtfully up at her through his eyelashes - their darkness a sharp but pleasing contrast to the vibrance of his skin coloured by the warm hues of firelight. The flickering flames casting playful, ebbing shadows over his features does not help her case. His lower lip is tugged inwards just a touch as he thinks, the curve of it somehow complimenting the lines around his mouth.

It takes what feels like an eternity for Cassian to respond. It takes most of Jyn’s willpower to focus on what he’s saying.

“Well, you said the stormtroopers following us have gone back. If they do come back to search the woods the rain will have washed away our tracks. But we can’t comm Kay with this storm in the atmosphere so… we have to wait for it to let up.”

“So, a few hours?”

“The rest of the night, I think. Storms here last a while.” 

As if to prove his point, a boom of thunder rumbles through the sky and reverberates through the ground.

Jyn moves to pull the rations and a canister of water out of her bag before setting her own coat, slick with water, atop of it. She engrosses herself in unwrapping the bar of dried foodstuff but can feel Cassian’s gaze linger on her. The wrapper gives way with a snap and she plops the ration pack into the canister.

When she looks up, Cassian is busy fiddling with some twigs and twine, twisting the latter around to create a makeshift rack over the fire.  

“Let’s make soup tonight,” she announces, setting the half-empty water canister on the wooden frame. The dry block bobs gently in the water as it begins to dissolve.

“Do you have spoons and another bowl?” 

Jyn’s head jerks upward. She’s startled by how close Cassian’s face is to hers. It’s unintentional - he’s leaned down to tighten the twine around the junctions of the frame. His distraction gives Jyn an opportunity to draw her attention away from the faint, playful smile playing at the corners of Cassian’s mouth and focus on coming up with a reply.

“I think so.” 

She can feel her face growing warm, and blaming it on her proximity to the fire, begins to dig in her backpack for utensils. 

She’s found lately that she is more prepared for the non-combat aspects of missions now, than when she’d been on her own or with the Partisans. 

The latter group packed non-essential items communally. Being the youngest, Jyn had been allocated the lighter, less valuable items. Occasionally Saw would sneak something small and more valuable, like a datapad, into her pack. At first, he’d whisper that it’d be safest with her, and then it became an unspoken agreement - like much of their relationship.

It used to send a prideful thrill through her when he did it. Then followed the years where any memory of those times soured her mood - but now Jyn bites back a sardonic grin at the irony of reminiscing her time as a child guerrilla solider with such fondness. 

“Care to share the joke?” 

“Hmm?” Jyn looks up with a cup clutched in her hand and finds Cassian’s eyes filled with a playful curiosity. He shakes his head gently, eyes tracking the motion of the cup in her hand as she sets it near the fire. 

“Never mind.”

Jyn furrows her eyebrows.  “One of us is going to have to use the smaller cup and I don’t have any spoons.”

Cassian shrugs. “I’ve had worse. Sipping hot soup from a cup? That’s the high life.”  

Jyn grins. “It’s a feast.”

For a moment, they hold each other’s gazes, the grin still firmly in place on Jyn’s face. She catches something spark briefly in his eyes before he ducks his head and fumbles with the opening of his bag. She can feel her heart thrum against her ribcage in response. Cursing internally, she busies herself with tending to the soup. 

“Speaking of feasts, I just remembered - I have leftovers from this morning.”

“You still have the fruit?” 

Jyn’s amused at how giddy her voice sounds. Cassian’s response is to pull a small container from his bag with a wide, childish grin. The unrestrained, carefree smile is a rare sight and Jyn can’t help but smile as well. He pops the lid open, revealing three halves of jogan fruit and an entire round of groat cheese. 

“I thought I had a whole fruit left but there isn’t one,” Cassian adds with a touch of a pout, carefully inspecting the slightly oxidized fruit. “And there aren’t any crackers for the cheese.”

Laughter bubbles in Jyn’s chest at the sheer concern on Cassian’s face. “Don’t worry - this isn’t a feast, it’s a picnic!”

Cassian sets the container down, running his thumb along the lid’s rim. “I haven’t had a picnic in… a very long time.”

Jyn purses her lips in a half-smile. “Neither have I, so that’s why we should do this right now. We have the time.”

The tilt of Cassian’s head warms her.

“Agreed.” 

He gives her the tiniest but gentlest of smiles - almost bashful - and Jyn is thankful that the soup starting to bubble as it boils distracts her from the flutter of her heart. 

* * *

“Are you scooping that with bare hands? It’s going to make a mess.”

“My blade is dirty, and my hands are clean, so, yes,” Jyn shrugs before eating the cheese squished between her fingers. “Honestly, why is Imperial food so impractical? I’d like to see one of their officers try a ration ba- are you using the  _jogan_ as  _crackers?”_

“I’m trying to!” Cassian stares at the stubbornly uncooperative soft cheese as if it would magically put itself on the fruit slices slippery with juice. Jyn smirks when he sighs and takes a bite of the cheese, smearing some on his fingers in the process.

“There’s no way to win, is there?” Cassian huffs as he nibbles it off his fingers. Jyn turns her attention back to her food, finishing off her helping of cheese.

“There’s always a way, Captain,” she smirks around the mouthful. Cassian quirks up a comical eyebrow. She takes an indulgent bite of fruit - Cassian had taken most of the cheese and she’d taken most of jogan - then adds, with a sly, spreading smile: “Rebellions are bui-” 

She fights down the chuckle that rises at the Cassian’s huffed sigh.

“Okay, alright,” she relents. She’s confused by the expression that lingers on Cassian’s face. He looks distant, unable hold her gaze, which is unusual, unless -

“You okay?”

His gaze refocuses abruptly, as if she’d spooked him out of his thoughts. “Oh, I just-”

 _Fark._  

A phantom hand squeezes Jyn’s throat, and shame settles over her. Juice drips from the half-eaten jogan still clutched in her hand.

She lowers her voice. “I’m - sorry.”

“For what?”

The amusement in his tone is a surprise. Jyn stares at him. 

“I thought I’d unnecessarily, y’know, reminded you - what are you staring at?” 

This time Jyn recognizes Cassian’s look as that of a chastised tooka-cat. 

“Ah, you’ve, um, got juice,” he gestures around his mouth, “here.” 

Jyn blinks. For a moment nothing registers except the sound of rain falling outside. Embarrassment colours her features as she hastily swipes her mouth with the back of her sleeve. Cautiously, she shoots Cassian a wary glance for approval.

She finds none.

“There’s still some-” Cassian ducks his head and Jyn realizes he’s almost as embarrassed as she is. 

“Is it-”

“Here, let me- may I?” 

Jyn nods and watches as Cassian lifts his hand.  

A twinge of something flutters within her - not resentment at being treated like a child, but fascination, almost, with the care he takes in moving slowly and carefully. To her surprise, instead of wiping it himself as she’d expected, he loosely grasps her fingers and guides them to the stubborn stain. He says nothing after letting her hand go.

She quickly wipes it off with mumbled thanks. 

There shouldn’t be a reason for her heart to pound this quickly at his mere touch. They’d been closer before, out of necessity - squashed together in tight hiding spots, patching each other up after a firefight - but also sometimes grudging opportunity: shoulders brushing together in a crowded mess, a comforting touch after a hard mission, a nap on a shoulder. 

The fire that had sparked to life on Scarif had only grown into an inferno, scorching down her spine at the most arbitrary of situations like the few drops of rain that made it under her shirt. 

Her appetite is gone, the strong taste of the jogan still lingering in her mouth. She fidgets with the piece in her hands, pads of her fingers skimming over the striped purple skin.

Rain continues to fall unfettered, setting a regular beat that pulls Jyn closer to sleep. She’s tired, and the soup has warmed away the chill of being soaked in the rain, and all the running she’s done today begins to creep up on her.

She shoots a glance over to Cassian to see how he’s faring. He’s frowning at their still-scrambled transponder, and something about the endearing expression of emotion makes a smile blossom.

His hair is still wet from the rain - the cave was muggy and the fire warm, but they had spent several minutes slogging through the forest, away from the Imperials, as rain came down in sheets. He catches her staring but for once she doesn’t turn away.

“You can sleep, I’ll take first watch,” Cassian says, setting the useless transponder aside. 

Jyn realizes she doesn’t want to sleep, really, despite the fatigue that’s inundated every fiber of her body. She’s watching him, seeing - seeing the same look from the elevator on Scarif but they’re not about to die, no, they’re safe. The glowing light around them that casts moving shadows on the rock walls around them is from the fire, not - not - 

The sight of something glittering by Cassian’s side catches her eye. The rock he’d used to start the fire. 

_Quartzite._

_Find this,_ her mother says,  _and you’ll never be cold._

“Jyn?”

_An expedition - a world of white. Glittering crystals, a mockery of the kyber that hangs around her neck. A cave, like this, split apart by a seam filled with crystals reaching up to the sky. Her hand in her mother’s, soil crunching under their boots. A promise for more adventures – a promise that is broken._

She snaps out of the memory to Cassian’s hands gripping her shoulders. “You okay?” 

“Just-”

“Sleepy?” 

Jyn shakes her head, offering him a smile to assuage his concerns. She knows he doesn’t seem to be fully convinced, but as usual, he doesn’t press further.

“The rock you used. It’s called quartzite.”

Cassian’s grip on her loosens and he moves away from her. She misses his closeness, even though he’s sitting close enough the toes of their boots touch.

The rain’s slowed. What had been falling in heavy sheets has quieted to a faint patter. She doesn’t want to sleep, but for a fleeting instant, she just wants to  _rest._

Cassian’s still watching her closely, but his concerned gaze has softened into something resembling adoration, almost, and that realization makes her shiver.

 _Kriff it,_  she thinks.

“Cassian?”  Her voice is hardly more than a whisper, words barely discernible from her breathing. She was never good with words – orders, she can handle, but emotions… emotions are messy and whatever she can manage to come up with falls short of what she wants to say.

Cassian understands, because he always does, and shifts closer. She leans into him first, pulling him into a hug like on Scarif. He doesn’t wait to pull her closer, hands grasping at her back.

Then, everything had been bright and hot and  _final_.

Here, in the dim glow of the cave, surrounded by air fresh with rainfall, it feels like a beginning.

“May I…” she starts, unsure of how to ask. She’s tucked into Cassian’s shoulder so her lips graze the collar of his shirt. “Can we-”

Cassian pulls away. Dismayed, she wonders if she’s said the wrong thing. But he’s only let her fall back enough so he can see her face. The light of the fire still catches in his eyes and they sparkle, and in that moment Jyn knows she’s truly, utterly,  _kriffed._

“Do you want this?” he asks, voice so soft she might as well be dreaming.

Her response is to nod and briefly press her lips against the corner of his mouth. She can  _feel_  his heartbeat pick up in pace and she knows he can feel hers pounding against his chest. When she pulls away she can hardly look at him.

When she musters the strength to do so, his eyes are cast downwards. If anyone had witnessed it, they wouldn’t have recognized the bashful expression as Cassian at all.

He catches her smiling at him, and encouraged, he gently presses a kiss to her lips. It’s chaste, hardly more than skin touching skin, but Jyn’s own breathing gets tangled in the web of want at his immediacy. 

She doesn’t pull away, this time, intent on discovering more. Encouraged by the ever-tightening grip Cassian has on her waist, she presses further. She is acutely aware of how his breath hitches by the shudder against her own shoulder, and with her hands in his hair she tugs him closer, determined to wrangle her name from his mouth but gasping his instead.

They fall into an easy but infrequent rhythm, interrupted by the odd breathless, disbelieving chuckle or soft, contented sigh. Words are hardly necessary between them, the silent language they’d created for warfare found new life as a tool for -

was it love?

Was that the name for the ache filling a slowly mending heart?

_Perhaps._

She hopes they will choose to find out.

They can’t continue to discover now, though, because the transponder chirps in the depths of Cassian’s jacket, skies clear of interference. It’s Cassian that pulls away, ever so reluctantly, and for a sharp, painful moment, Jyn’s terrified they’ll go back to feigned normalcy.

Instead, he tucks a loose lock of hair behind her ear before running his thumb across her reddened lower lip, his own face flushed with a mixture of emotions Jyn can feel in her own blood.

“Ready?”

**Author's Note:**

> This got a really warm welcome on tumblr so thank you! ♥


End file.
